P&G continues its efforts with the World Wildlife Fund and several industry leaders to develop stricter standards to protect forests touched by palm oil production.

“We will continue to support RSPO standards as a key mechanism to drive responsible palm practices across the industry,” said P&G Vice President of Global Sustainability Len Sauers. “However, given the continued pressure on forests and peat lands, we recognize the need to take additional steps beyond RSPO to confirm the palm derived materials we purchase are not contributing to deforestation.”

P&G currently holds its palm oil / palm derivatives suppliers to standards higher than those set by the RSPO.

• Respect land tenure rights, including rights of indigenous and local communities to give or withhold their free, prior and informed consent for development of land they own legally, communally or by custom.

Waste from P&G Charmin plant in Mexico is now used to make roof tiles for the local community.

“To achieve these stricter standards, we need to establish industry-wide, accepted definitions of what should be considered protected areas – and then work to ensure they are indeed protected from deforestation,” Sauers said.

Toward that end, P&G has:

• Joined the High Carbon Stock Approach Steering Group – working to define and develop an assessment tool for HCS forests for land-use planning;

• Joined the Traceability Working Group – advancing industry platform for traceability and supply shed risk assessment and verification;

• Joined the RSPO Small Holder Working Group aimed at driving sustainable practices across the supply chain;

• Provided input on the new RSPO Guidance Document for palm fruit management with smallholders based on work with the Malaysia Institute for Supply Chain Innovation.

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In addition, P&G signed a public letter to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil to adopt stronger criteria to eliminate deforestation from palm oil supply chains. P&G signed the letter along with PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive, Kao, Johnson & Johnson, Albertsons-Safeway, ConAgra, Coop Switzerland, Dunkin’ Brands, General Mills, Mars, Inc., Seventh Generation, Starbucks, The Kellogg Company, and Walmart.

“P&G welcomes the chance to work with the broader community to positively shape and improve practices that will protect our forests while still supporting the livelihoods of thousands of local communities,” Sauers said.

P&G is on track to meet its goal of ensuring traceability to mills by 2015.